


Bigger Picture

by Dribbledscribbles



Category: The Magnus Archives
Genre: I know it'll never happen, M/M, but holy shit what a twist it'd be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24915028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dribbledscribbles/pseuds/Dribbledscribbles
Summary: In the Changed world, there is no exempting the chattel of humanity from the Fears.Their lot is livestock and even the Archivist cannot free them.But there are those penned in with the fearful masses that shouldn’t be—and they can be unearthed.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood
Comments: 27
Kudos: 166





	Bigger Picture

It’s the wind that does it. 

There’s no way he’ll go that won’t take him closer to the Panopticon, no way to go that won’t bring him and Martin through another domain, so detours are a moot point. A matter of leaning this way or that way or scanning to see if an avatar who’d earned a nasty Glance from the Eye was waiting ahead. Jon had almost mistaken this particular route for the latter—Simon Fairchild would be breezing around somewhere as they approached the gusty realm of the Vast—but no. 

It was the wind.

It was screaming. Not a choir of victims, but a single voice. Muffled, gagging, wailing around his ears. 

“Martin, do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Jon squinted in the direction of the breeze. Something like Knowledge tickled along the edges of his mind. Crumbs of fact. 

_An offshoot of a domain is that way. A piece of the Buried. Not the Crawling Muck, but the Crushing Grave. The coffin’s terrain._

Following this thought was the Archivist’s immediate boredom. Despite Jon’s curiosity, the Archivist had already consumed and regurgitated a helping from the Buried. Old news, old flavor, move along. 

_Avatars. Victims._

“What?”

“What?” Martin echoed. He laid a hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Jon, what is it?”

“I—I’m not sure, I’m trying to Know—,”

_Avatars. Victims. Buried._

“That’s…wait.” Jon stopped to truly take in where they were. The rough asphalt, the tangled scrub woods, the broad stretch of semi-wild nothing that sat between two spots of civilization. A nauseous breed of nostalgia simmered. “I know this road.”

“Like, you know it, or you Capital K Know it?”

“Both. This is where Daisy took me, back when she was still—,”

“A bastard cop hopped up on the Hunt?” The tone was not merely leaden, but an anchor magnetized to the Earth’s core. Jon offered it a fragment of a smile.

“Yes, that. Me and—and—,”

_Avatars. Victims. Buried._

“Oh.” The wind screamed in his ears. “Oh, shit.” Then Jon was jogging, almost sprinting into the gust. 

“What the hell—wait up! Jon!” Jon skidded on his heels, pausing just long enough to grab Martin by his shoulder strap, and then went lunging ahead like a gangly sled dog. “Jon, talk to me. What is it? What’s got your magic Watcher senses tingling? …Jon?”

“I can do something,” Jon breathed, not necessarily to Martin, to the recorder, to anything. “I can _do_ something for them.” The wind wailed at him. “I know, I Know, I’m coming—,”

Off the asphalt, past the gravel shoulder, through the brush, deeper, further, out in the clearing. Oh, here was the tree Daisy had crunched him against, ready to open his throat with his own knife. And there was where they’d buried—

Buried—

“Jon, is that a fractal? I-Is this something with Spiral?”

“No. It’s a Lichtenberg figure. Marks electrical discharge. Lightning strikes.” Jon had to shout it over the wind. It rushed around the clearing like a small, weak tornado, clawing at the trees and bushes, tearing away leaves, kicking up only the tiniest grains of loose dirt. Not enough, though. Not nearly enough to matter. 

Hunter or no, Daisy had only given a beating and a bullet. Enough to incapacitate her quarries, yes. Enough to get them here, where they could be hidden away like trophies, like secret dog bones. But Jon was living proof of how little such things could mean. Flattened by a building, stabbed and slashed a dozen times, exposed directly to the Dark Sun itself—and off he’d gone. Still ticking. Durable things, avatars.

Had she known, back then? What this place, the act of burial in it, was? 

_The fear of being buried alive. Of waking to dirt and blindness and the breathless crush on all sides. Avatars, victims, Buried. Oh, God._

“Martin, help me.”

Jon was already at the center of the Lichtenberg, using both hands to claw at the dirt. Martin said something he couldn’t hear over the wind; it was swirling around him like a vortex, frantically sweeping away whatever loose soil he piled up. 

The Grave growled. As best a thing of dirt and stone and root could growl. Martin made a louder sound. Jon thought he heard his name and half an expletive.

“Let them out,” Jon shouted down at the earth. The hole was trying to refill itself with dark, rich soil—petulant. Greedy. The wind moaned. Jon felt his Eyes begin to burn open as his hands clawed harder, deeper. Jon didn’t speak. The Archivist did. “ _These are not yours to keep. They never were. You are a hoarder, a thief, a cage for those that were never meant for your gluttonous hold. They have their patrons as you have avatars of your own. And victims, of course. Squirming, twisting, seething, crunching, hopeless worms and living corpses all along this world’s skin, and you are owed no more than that. Release these stones from your soil._ ”

Martin was beside him now, his face ruddy and confused as he helped pull the earth away, away, away—

Until a pale hand lurched up and caught Jon’s own.

“ **Now.** ”

The clearing no longer growled, but groaned. It was almost a whine. Meanwhile, the wind had soared up to a great, ecstatic howl in the branches. Under the noise of it all, the soil lurched, trembled, quivered and ultimately broke open. 

Hands burst through like flailing blossoms, followed by a procession of brown-stained bodies. Men and women, monsters and horrors, all scrabbling up into the Eye’s deformed ‘daylight,’ every one of them turning onto their hands and knees as tides of mud and loam surged out of them. Worms flopped and squirmed in the puddles. The sight spurred another purge. 

Martin might have joined them in sympathy if not for the very distracting sight of a man scrambling up out of the ground to latch onto Jon like a vise. He too was retching great clumps of muck up, spilling mess as Jon resorted to an old college habit of holding back the man’s hair; under the grime, Martin saw a scar as zigzagging as the Lichtenberg scrawled on his neck and cheek. A neat round hole had scarred over on his temple.

After some minutes of this, Jon spoke up, his voice threading between his static and the Archivist’s compelling tone, “Follow us. The Grave has let you out, but it will make another grab if you fall back in your pit. Come on.”

The dirt-streaked crowd gawked at him. Eyes that could pass for human and many that couldn’t shined out like teary jewels. Then they shambled toward him. Jon marched back to the road, the pale man still locked onto him with one arm over his shoulders—a shuddering, staggering scarf. Martin found himself reflexively going to help a rickety young woman with fog weeping out of her eyes and mouth. Others leaned on each other, making a filthy, atrophied parade out of the woods.

“Jon.”

“Yes?”

“What just happened? Exactly?”

“I can’t get the humans out. But I could get them. Their patrons are all here, feeding trickles of power into them. Enough to—to loosen them, make them able to exit. With help. Some have been in there for years.”

“…Daisy’s victims.”

The man on Jon’s shoulders coughed and spat another dirt clod. His voice rasped once, twice. Then:

“Was that the fucking cop’s name?”

“Yes. She’s—not here.” 

“Pity,” hack, spit, “there’s a hole back there I’d like to introduce her to. Or a cozy spot in the stratosphere.” There was an attempt at a laugh that turned into another cough. His hold tightened on Jon as he seemed to decide between vomiting again or not. 

Martin adjusted his hold on the wilting, foggy girl who weighed almost nothing against him. She was so hazy she seemed to almost be mist herself. Perhaps it was the Lonely on her that had his hackles rising, perhaps it was just him, but he had to ask:

“Sorry, who are you?”

“Michael Crew. But please,” a tired, humorless grin curled, “call me Mike.”

No one split up when they reached the road. Many of those leaning against each other had been neighbors in the Grave, brushing fingers or toes or noses, and were content to exist beside each other for a time, breathing and knowing each other while dryly scouring the dirt from their skin. Many gaped at the Changed world, nursing on the revelations their Fearful masters could now funnel directly into their heads. 

There were, fittingly enough, thirteen unearthed avatars in all. One for every Fear that was not the Eye. 

Even a chastened avatar of the Buried huddled among them, weeping mud and apologies—he’d never wanted this, wanted them. A long since failed suicide attempt, Douglas Fern had come here a quarter of a century ago, dug a hole, and given himself a shot to put himself to sleep forever. The Buried had refused to let such promise slip through its fingers. So there he’d stayed, alive and melded with his Grave. Until now. Now, he was outside of himself. An appendage of his own soil-flesh, slithering on a hill of dirt that had been his legs.

And here he was with the rest of them. A full menagerie of avatars.

“That’s not coincidence, I’d wager,” Mike hummed after his third swish of mouthwash. Martin had brought it from the cabin, if only because it was one of the few liquids that hadn’t gone all bizarre in the Change. Evil didn’t take to wintergreen flavor, apparently. “If the Web itself is here and you’re tangled up in its thread, there’s no chance.”

Martin wanted to ask what an avatar of the Vast could know about the Web, but held the question back at the sight of the woman who was methodically collecting spiders from a nearby tree. Her eight eyes were an opaque ink black and he couldn’t tell where they were looking. Only that they looked angry. 

“That occurred to me too,” Jon sighed. “The Web has its sticky micromanaging threads everywhere.”

“Always has.” Another swish, spit. “Bit of a coin toss on what the point is here, though. The Vast’s just shot me an update on your whole deal with the past few avatars you’ve crossed. Some you’ve killed off, some you’ve let go.” Mike regarded him with pallid eyes. “I suppose I’m on the chopping block after that little ride I gave you. If so, can you spare a proper drink before I go? I don’t want to die still tasting mud.” 

Jon looked at him. At the cluster of avatars all loitering together, trying out speech for the first time in years, all glancing in the directions of their various domains, but none moving. None leaving. Most of them—eventually all of them—wound up turning their gazes to Jon. They knew about the Archivist too. The Harbinger of the Change, merciful or merciless by turns. Does he hate you? Does he spare you? You can’t run from his Gaze or that of his Beholding master.

So they sat and they waited. To see if they died. To see if they lived. To see if they would go skulking off to their realms; their Powers which had been content to leave them tucked in the Grave for all time. They’d be there still if not for the Archivist. 

So, sit. Wait. If they die here, they die aboveground. Grateful.

Jon sighed through his nose.

“I’m not killing anyone today, Mike. You included.”

“Well, I appreciate that.” Mike looked up at the sky. It looked back. “Guess it’s _that_ side of the coin, then.”

“What side?”

“The side with the bigger picture on it. If the Web didn’t want my breeze to reach your ear, it wouldn’t have. But it did. You came, you found us, you freed us. Now here’s all these avatars, a touch too disillusioned to shack up with our Fears just yet, all well aware of who’s king of the castle among us. The ones afraid to piss you off aren’t about to make a move. The ones who are fine with dying are just too shell-shocked to bother with anything. My guess, the lot of us—this whole, ‘one Fear apiece’ avatar club with the Archivist on top—we’re supposed to _do_ something.”

“Like what?” Martin finally grated out. “Start a campfire, reminisce about all the fun times spent terrorizing people in the good old days?”

“No,” a voice like a thousand scurrying legs whispered overhead. Jon, Martin, and Mike all looked up. The Web woman hung there, light as a cellar spider, suspended by a silk hammock. Between her long hands she’d weaved a smaller web where all the spiders she’d collected were being forced to kill each other. Some of her eyes glared down at them. The rest seemed to appraise her audience below. “This is textbook work from the Mother. Pitting her child-puppets against each other. A backup plan, should Annabelle Cane’s,” she pronounced the name like a four-letter word, “scheme fall through.”

“You know Annabelle, don’t you, Sophia?” Jon said more than asked.

The Web woman, Sophia, laughed with soft, venomous hate.

“She’s the one who put me in Daisy Tonner’s path. The one who knew all along what would happen to me if I crossed that particular Hunter. Sharp senses on that Beast of yours, Mr. Sims. Caught me out the moment she finished with that poor fellow from the Stranger. Put me in the Grave same as him. And there I stayed, abandoned, for two years, in that clinging, crushing earth. Courtesy of Annabelle. And of dear, dear _Mother._ ” 

All but one spider was dead and cocooned in her handheld web. She mulled it a moment before balling the whole thing up, silk, spiders and all, and cramming a fang into it, the venom turning it all to liquefied sludge. She drank it. 

“So here I am. The most natural Spider among her brood; a child who would like nothing more than to consume my Mother as is proper for the arachnid family. Isn’t that so, Mr. Blackwood?” Another unhappy hiss of a laugh. “But I can’t. She has no body to eat, and she is not even a she. Only silk and control and mockery. But I _can_ ruin it all for Annabelle Cane. Oh, yes. And, if you’d be amenable, Mr. Sims,” her mouth rippled open, raining venom, the oil bubble eyes gleaming, “I’d like us to make it especially excruciating when she goes.”

“Us.”

“Yes, us. You and I and everyone here. Your…I suppose you’d call it your ‘Avatars of the Round Table.’ One for every Fear. Those who have been on both sides of terror. Most who, if you’ll simply Look and Know it, were all rather low on the malice scale. Daisy Tonner was a fine Hunter, true, but not terribly picky about her quarries. She picked off the ‘stragglers.' The ones who did just enough to keep their masters from coming down on them. Avatars who took care of a chore versus reveled." She shrugged. "Stuck between a rock and an eldritch place, the lot of us. You Know I’m right.”

“Do I?”

“Would we still be alive if you didn’t?” 

Jon turned away from her. He had been Beholding them all for some minutes now, skimming through their histories, their work as avatars, their minds, everything. Everything.

And, in almost all of them, he had found too many mirrors. 

“Jon?” Martin was at his shoulder, low in his ear. “Jon, whatever this is, do not listen to her. She’s—,”

“I know.”

“Do you know or do you—,”

“I Know, Martin. She isn’t lying.”

“Not the same as telling the truth.”

“Should I give you two some space?” Mike broke in. “I feel like you need space.”

Martin almost said something along the lines of ‘yes, please, thanks, bye,’ when Jon was suddenly on his feet and walking away from the road's shoulder himself. Before him, the avatars tensed. Some stood as if a general had walked in the room. Behind him, Jon felt Sophia the Spider hop down from her tree to pace after him. Mike trod lightly after. Martin paused. Then followed too.

Jon breathed. Over the next few minutes, he wouldn’t quite tell which words were his and which were the Archivist’s. But his mouth did move and his voice did paint a picture for them all; a big, sprawling picture of their options.

They would live. 

They could take themselves away to the domains that called them. They could linger in-between.

Or they could take a third option. His option.

He was going to the Panopticon. There was a man there he meant to destroy, to overthrow, to inflict as much pain on as possible before extinguishing him. Come with him, come help him, and he would extend his protection as the Archivist to them. Anyone interested?

Quiet for a moment. Chatter amongst each other.

Finally, Mike spoke up: “If you’re Arthur, I’m calling Galahad.”

“Lancelot,” Sophia hummed.

That broke the hush and the indecision. 

As one, the procession turned toward the Panopticon. 

And though Jon would not say it, would do his absolute best not to think it, he found another tapestry forming in his head. A depiction of a world that did not turn back, but forward. On and on into a future that was painted in a deranged caricature of Camelot, the Fears united and pacified by the living limbs that were the Archivist’s rescued, sheltered few—knights and ambassadors all. A future with a Spider in one ear of the one wearing the Watcher’s Crown, the eternal Advisor, Eye at the top, and Web atop that. 

Jon pushed the image away. Smothered it.

And tried to look at the bigger picture.


End file.
